Introduction: Media as Historical Subjects

• “Media are so integral to a sense of what representation itself it” – If people in 100 years times were only to look at our media artefacts as representation of our generation like what our newspapers were about, the internet, what was on youtube (if it still exists), what would they think?
• Gitelman defines history of not just what happened in the past but also the varied practice of representing the past
• New media also lets us see a new way jobs get constructed

He also defines media as ‘socially realised structures of communication, where structures include both technological forms and their associated protocols, and where communication is a cultural practice, a ritualised collocation of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaging with popular ontologies of representation.”

• It takes into account that communication and media are social – socially influenced as opposed to the technological determinist view
• Their histories are not just social but also cultural – their original intent or use doesn’t say the same as when someone invented it or how it just simply evolved from another form of media – it’s more complex than that
• In this context, protocols include a “vast cluster of normative rules and default conditions” however these protocols are socially constructed but can be influenced by the media form
• The underlying purpose of media is to communicate